Historic Aircraft - The Tail-sitters, Part 1—Lockheed

A plethora of advanced aviation technology became available in the aftermath of World War II, as the Allies searched through the wreckage of German design bureaus, factories, and research institutes. British aviation expert Bill Gunston described what he considered the most radical project discovered in the Focke-Wulf project office at Bad Eilsen:

Though it never got beyond the stage of paper and a desk-top model, the Triebflugel was a remarkable amalgam of new ideas, which might even have worked. It was a target-defence interceptor, which stood on its tail pointing vertically upwards. It had no wings; instead a rotating collar around the mid-fuselage carried three slender airfoils, which could be regarded as wings or rotor blades. On the tip of each was a Pabst ramjet. 1

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